EUGENE DE RIBEAUPIERRE.
"Ford. Well, he's not here I seek for.
Page. No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.
Ford. Help me to search my house this one time: if I
find not what I seek, show me no colour for my extremity,
let me for ever be your table sport; let them say of me, 'As
jealous as Ford, that searched hollow walnuts for his wife's
leman.'"--_Merry Wives of Windsor._
Quentin Kennedy was only master of a certain amount of the Spanish
language, which he had rapidly acquired through the medium of his
friend the dominie's sonorous Scottish latinity; but fortunately the
young Frenchman, who seemed to be highly accomplished, spoke English
with remarkable fluency.
His uniform, we have said, was in rags; his epaulettes had gone in
the recent struggle, the straps of lace for retaining them on the
shoulders alone remained. A hole in the breast of his light green
jacket showed where the gold cross of the Legion had been rent away
by some guerilla's hand, and the state of his scarlet pantaloons made
one see the advantage of wearing a kilt for pugnacious casualties, as
they were now reduced to mere shreds.
He was a slender young man, in appearance only a year or two older
than Quentin, though really many years his senior in experience of
the world and of life generally. His hair, which he wore in
profusion, was dark brown and silky, and his hands, on one of which
sparkled a splendid ring, were white and almost ladylike. An
incipient moustache shaded his short upper lip; his features were
very regular, and he was so decidedly good-looking, that Quentin
could not help thinking that if he had a sister like him, she must be
charming!
They quitted the highway and entered a dense thicket by the wayside,
where breathless, hot, and weary, they cast themselves on the cool
deep grass that grew under the leafy shade, and the last of the
contents of Quentin's canteen, divided between them, proved very
acceptable to both.
"I perceive that you are a French officer," said Quentin; "may I ask
whom I have had the honour of succouring?"
"Certainly, mon camarade; I am a sous-lieutenant of my father's
regiment, the 24th Chasseurs à Cheval--my name is Eugene de
Ribeaupierre."
"Any relation of the general who commands in Valencia?"
"A very near one," said he, laughing; "I am his son, and monsieur's
very obedient servant. Come! let us rest ourselves and talk a
little. The tap on the head you gave that Spaniard was most critical
and serviceable to me."
"True--it only came just in time!"
"I hope it may have despatched him outright."
"I trust not, now that the end was accomplished."
"Now that we have breathing time, you will perhaps excuse my little
curiosity, and say how you came to be here, within two or three miles
of our sentinels?"
"The country is quite open," said Quentin, evasively, with a smile.
"Your troops, we have heard, are closing up from Lisbon and
elsewhere; but have not as yet been rash enough to enter Spain, the
territories of King Joseph."
"Rash, monsieur?"
"Peste! I suppose your generals have not forgotten the sharp lessons
we taught them at Roleia and Vimiera?"
Quentin laughed to hear the pleasant tone in which the Frenchman
spoke of two very important defeats of the Emperor's troops as
"lessons" to the British, but he said plainly enough,
"I am here because I was sent on duty."
"To whom, monsieur?"
Quentin hesitated.
"Nay, out with it, man--trust me, on my honour--I may well pledge it
to one who has saved me from a barbarous death within this hour, and
earned my warmest gratitude."
"Well, then, I go to Don Baltasar de Saldos."
"Diable! the man's a guerilla chief, and we have just had a severe
brush with his people. My patrol, consisting of a sergeant, a
corporal, and twelve chasseurs, were riding leisurely along the road
from San Vincente towards the summit of yonder mountain, when, from a
grove of cork and cypress trees, there flashed out some twenty
muskets. It was an ambush; the leading section of them fell dead;
the rest broke through, sabre à la main, and fled, pursued by the
guerillas, who sprang after them with the yells of fiends and the
activity of squirrels, leaping from bank to rock, and from rock to
tree, firing and reloading so long as we were in range. Struck by a
ball in the counter, my horse reared wildly up, and threw me; for
some minutes I was insensible, and on recovering, found myself in the
paws of yonder Spanish bear, who was thrice my bulk and strength.
You know the rest. I thought it was all up with me. As Francis said
at Pavia, 'tout est perdu, sauf l'honneur!' Baltasar's head-quarters
are in a mountain puebla near Herreruela, where he successfully
defies my father's cavalry. Am I right in supposing that you have
been sent to invite his co-operation in some projected movement?"
"My orders were simply to deliver to him a despatch and rejoin my
regiment."
"It is a dangerous and desperate errand, my friend," said the young
Frenchman, while regarding Quentin with some interest; "I mean
desperate to be undertaken by one alone. It looks almost like a
sacrifice of you!"
"A sacrifice?" repeated Quentin, as his thoughts naturally wandered
to Cosmo.
"Parbleu, yes--to the exigencies of the service."
"Some of my friends were not slow in saying as much," replied
Quentin; "but then I--I am only a volunteer, and as such, must take
any hazardous duty, I have been told."
"Well, here we must lurk till nightfall--you to avoid our patrols,
which are usually withdrawn for a few hours after the evening gun
fires, when the inlying picquet gets under arms; I to avoid those
pestilent guerillas. The shade here is cool, and if we had a bottle
of wine, a sliced melon, and a little ice, our pleasure would be
complete."
"And you think I must conceal myself here?"
"Undoubtedly, mon ami; our people are scouring all the highways, and
would be sure to cut you off. Then there is that devilish
Spaniard--ah, the brigand!--he will not be in haste to forget the
knock you gave him on the head, and should he or his comrades fall in
with you, I would not give you a sou for your safety!"
"Strange, is it not, that the first man I have struck on Spanish
ground should be a Spaniard?"
"These dons have unpleasant memories for such little attentions, and
here the secret shot or stab usually settles everything; but before
we separate, I shall have the honour of showing you the direct path
to the head-quarters of De Saldos, after which, you must look to your
pistols and put your trust in Providence. I shall keep your secret,
and if there is any other way in which I can serve you, command me."
"I thank you; but I hope that to-night, or to-morrow morning at
latest, will see my face turned towards Portugal, for I long to
rejoin my corps."
"The fugitives of my party will spread a calamitous report concerning
me in Valencia, and my father, the poor old general, will suppose
that I am lying shot on the mountains, instead of holding this
pleasant _tête-à-tête_ with one of the sacré Anglais over the
comfortable contents of his canteen," said Ribeaupierre, laughing.
"What a droll world it is!"
"And your mother--I think I heard you mention your mother. She----"
"Happily will know nothing about it, as she is with Joseph's court.
She is a gentle and loving creature, with a heart all tenderness.
Ah, the seat of war, would never do for her, and, ma foi! it doesn't
suit me either. It was not willingly I became a soldier, be assured;
and yet, now that I am fairly in for it, and have won my epaulettes
and cross, I should not like to find myself a mere citizen again.
Peste! I shall not in a hurry forget the night on which, by a great
malheur, a great mistake, I was forced to become a soldier."
"Mistake--how?" asked Quentin, smiling at the young Frenchman's
gestures and energy.
"Mon camarade, a man says more when under the influences of
eau-de-vie, or champagne, than he ever does under those of
vin-ordinaire, cold water, or a bowl of gruel; and, as your
remarkably potent rum-and-water has put me in that condition when a
man reveals his loves and hates, and, more foolish still, sometimes
his private history, I don't care if I tell you how I became a
soldier.
"My father," began the garrulous chasseur, "is an officer of the old
days of the monarchy, and held his first commission, like the Emperor
himself, from Louis XVI., the Most Christian King, and they were
brother subalterns in the regiment of La Fere. To the friendship
that grew up between them there, the old gentleman owes his brigade
and the Grand Cross of the Legion, quite as much as to his own
bravery in Germany, Italy, and Flanders. My mother (or she at least
whom I have been taught to call my mother, for she is his second
wife,) was a widow of rank, who lost her whole possessions in the
stormy days of the Revolution. She was without children, and when my
father was assisting the Little Corporal to play the devil at Toulon,
Arcola, Lodi, Marengo, and elsewhere, she most affectionately took
charge of me, and of my education in Paris.
"As we were not rich, it was proposed to make a doctor of me, and so
I was duly matriculated at the Ecole de Médecine, and commenced my
studies there, not with much enthusiasm or industry either; but in
the vague hope, nevertheless, that I might some day cut a figure and
have my portrait hung among the full lengths of Ambrose Paré,
Maréchal, La Peyronnie, and others in the school.
"I look back with no small repugnance to the daily tasks I performed
there, and to the horrors of the dissecting-room, after boyish
curiosity grew satiated. My brain became addled by lectures on the
maxillary sinus, on diseases of the stomach, of the pylorus, the
hepatic and abdominal viscera; elephantiasis, aortic aneurism, the
lacteal and glandular system, and Heaven alone knows all what more,
till I imagined that I had alternately in my own person every ailment
peculiar to man. We had plenty of subjects, for daily the guillotine
was slicing away in the Place de la Grève, and I have seen the
loveliest women and the noblest men in France laid on those tables to
be stripped and dissected by the knife of the demonstrator.
"I was soon voted the worst if not the most stupid student that ever
put his foot within the college walls. The professors were in
despair. They could make nothing of me; and to muddle my poor brain
more, about this time I must needs fall in love. Ah! I perceive
that you now become interested. I was not much over seventeen, and
my first love----"
"First?" said Quentin.
"_Oui--ma foi!_ I have had a dozen--was Madame Lisette Thiebault, a
friend of my mother."
"A widow, of course?"
"Not at all. She was unfortunately the wife of one of our doctors in
the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine;" replied the _étourdi_ young
Frenchman.
"Married!" said poor Quentin, somewhat aghast.
"_Peste!_ of course she was; but we don't care for such little
obstacles in Paris. Well, Lisette, for so I must name her, was
nearly ten years my senior, and so had what she called a motherly
interest in me. She was a very handsome woman, somewhat inclined to
_embonpoint_, with a clear pale complexion and laughing eyes, exactly
the colour of her hair, which was a rich deep brown. She was always
gay, laughing and smiling, except when her husband, the doctor, was
present, and one could no more make fun with him, than with old Bébé."
"Who, or what was he?"
"The mummy of the King of Poland's dwarf--_Ouf!_ what a horror it
is!--which we have in the School of the Faculty at Paris. Lisette
was very fond of me, and, being a little addicted to literature--she
was fond of poetry, too--so we read much together.
"Ere long, monsieur, the doctor began to think all this very
improper, so he rudely and abruptly put a stop to our studies; he
locked Ovid up, and me out. _Tudieu!_ here was an outrage! I
thought of inviting him to breathe the morning air on the Bois de
Boulogne; but a duel between a first-year's student and an old doctor
was not to be thought of. Madame had a tender heart, so she pitied
me. She considered her husband's conduct cruel, ungrateful,
outrageous, barbarous; so, as it was necessary that my classical
studies should not be neglected, we arranged a little code of
signals. Thus, Lisette, by simply keeping a drawing-room window open
or shut, or a muslin curtain festooned or closely drawn, could inform
me when Bluebeard was at home or abroad; whether the breach was
practicable or not; and thus we circumvented our tyrant for a time,
and I returned with ardour to the study of classical poetry; but as
for the dissecting-room, diable! it saw no more of me.
"Of the doctor I had always a wholesome dread, as he was a
_Septembriseur_."
"What is that?" asked Quentin, perceiving a dark expression shade the
face of Ribeaupierre.
"'Tis a name we have in Paris for those who were concerned as aiders
or abettors of the horrible September massacres--he would have
thought no more of slily putting a bullet into me, than of killing a
wasp; thus, you see, I pursued the acquisition of knowledge under
difficulties.
"Now came out the edict issued about eight years ago, for raising two
hundred thousand men for the army and marine, and every young man in
France had to inscribe his name for the conscription. I omitted--we
shall call it delayed--to inscribe mine; but my learned friend, M. le
Docteur Thiebault, unknown to me, performed that little service in my
behalf. He was extremely loth that the Republic--it was the glorious
indivisible Republic of liberty, equality, fraternity, and tyranny
then--should be deprived of my valuable aid by land or sea.
"About the time when he usually returned from visiting his patients,
I had bidden adieu to madame, for our studies were over, and in the
dusk of the evening was on my way home when surprised by a patrol of
the police under a commissaire, at the corner of the Rue Ecole de
Médecine. To avoid them I shrunk into a porch, but they invited me
rather authoritatively to come forth, and on my doing so, a sergeant
passed his lantern scrutinizingly across my face.
"'A young man,' said the commissaire, who was new in the quartier;
'who are you?'
"'I am not obliged to say,' said I.
"'Ah--we shall see that; what are you?'
"'A student of the Faculty of Médecine. Vive la République! War to
the cottage--peace to the castle!' I replied, waving my hat.
"'Is your name inscribed for the levy, blunderer? You quote oddly
for a student!'
"'Of course my name is inscribed,' said I, boldly, though I little
knew that it was so.
"'Show me your card which certifies this.'
"'Mon Dieu!' I exclaimed, as a brilliant thought occurred to me; 'do
not speak so loud, monsieur.'
"'Diable; may we not raise our voices in the streets of Paris?' he
asked.
"'Not if you knew the mischief an alarm would do me.'
"'Tête Dieu! 'tis an odd fellow, this!'
"'Monsieur, pity me!' said I, in a voice full of entreaty. 'I throw
myself upon your generosity--I perceive that I melt your heart. I
have not my card; it is with my wife----'
"'Morbleu! you are very young to have a wife, my friend, with a chin
like an apple,' said the grim old sergeant, as he passed his lantern
across my face again; 'I hope she is fully grown; but to the point,
my fine fellow, or we shall have to march you to the Conciergerie,
and they have an unpleasant mode of pressing questions there.'
"'Where is this wife of yours, my little friend?'
"'In her house, M. le Commissaire, where you see that light above the
lamp with the scarlet bottle. Ah, the perfidious! There she awaits
a lover for whom I am watching.'
"I acted my part to the life, though jealousy is not a peculiarity of
French husbands.
"'And this lover?' said the commissaire, becoming suddenly
interested, perhaps from some fellow-feeling.
"'He is a young brother student of mine.'
"'His name?' said the commissaire, producing a note-book.
"'Eugene de Ribeaupierre.'
"'We know him,' said the other, 'for the greatest young rascal in all
Paris. He destroyed a tree of liberty in the Palais Royal, and
painted the nose of Equality red in the Jardin des Plantes.'
"'The same, monsieur,' said I, in a whining voice; 'he will come here
disguised in a grey wig and spectacles to delude you, M. le
Commissaire, and me too, unhappy that I am. Ah, mon Dieu, there he
is! there he is! Seize him, in the name of morality and justice, of
the République Démocratique et Sociale!'
"The patrol instantly laid violent hands on the person of Doctor
Thiebault, who, to do him justice, made a violent resistance, and
broke the sergeant's lantern, to the tune of twenty francs, before he
was borne off to the Conciergerie, where he passed three days and
nights in a horrid vault among thieves and malefactors, before he was
brought up for examination, when it was discovered that it was not a
young student, but an old professor of the healing art, standing high
in the estimation of all Paris, who had been maltreated and carried
off by the watch.
"So the whole story came out, and on the fourth day I found myself
off _en route_ to join my father's corps of Chasseurs à Cheval, then
serving against the Austrians. My good mother shed abundance of
tears at my departure; the Abbé Lebrun gave me abundance of good
advice and a handful of louis d'or, which I considered of more value,
and in a month after I found myself face to face with the white coats
in the forest of Frisenheim, on the left bank of the Rhine.
"As a parting gift my dear friend Lisette had given me a holy medal
to save me from bullets and so forth; but, diable! it nearly cost me
my life, for one of the first balls fired near Oggersheim beat it
into my ribs; the ball came out, but the blessed medal stuck fast,
and all the skill of our three doctors was required to extract it, so
after three months I found myself again in my beloved Paris on sick
leave."